The present invention relates to wireless digital networks, and in particular, to the problem of providing secure mobile remote access to wireless digital networks.
Wireless digital networks, particularly IEEE 802.11 WiFi networks operated in the enterprise, provide secure controlled access to resources. An enterprise typically devotes significant resources to establishing and maintaining network security, for example by using firewalls to limit ingress, egress, and traffic types, authentication and access controls to limit use of network resources to only those so authorized, and filtering to protect users and system resources from viruses, worms, and other hostile actions.
When members of the enterprise take their digital devices, such as laptop computers, outside the corporate network environment, they still wish to access these same resources, but they are now operating outside the protective layers of the enterprise infrastructure.
What is needed is a way of providing secure remote access to networks to users in a mobile environment.